The Thousand and One Nights

What Hacker News says

1. shriphaniMay 2021
   The first story in Exhalation is written in the style of the Arabian Nights (Thousand and One Nights). Get the unabridged, original translation by Richard Burton - it is some of the most beautiful literature ever written - comes in 16 volumes so there will be no shortage of reading material!
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2. jk7tarYZAQNpTQaMay 2021
   The Shahnameh is a good start. IIRC there's a high quality bilingual (English and Persian) version of it, with drawings and all. If you prefer it in podcast version, Mazandercast [1] spends a few minutes of each episode to narrate it. The rest of the episode is spent explaining traditions, festivities, etc. A good podcast if you're interested in overall Persian culture and history.

   Of course another good book is "One Thousand and One Nights".

   [1] https://open.spotify.com/show/4wOrW7rq5g4HZpSbi3nvwl?si=Ft_t...

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3. pmoriartyOct 2016
   I'd recommend the travel writing of Richard Francis Burton: adventurer, spy, scholar, and all-around erudite Victorian badass.[1]

   Burton was famous for being the first non-muslim to see Mecca and Medina (which he did in disguise), when the penalty for non-mulsims entering the holy cities was death. He did the same in other dangerous places as well, taking similar risks. Burton also wrote a famous translation of the Thousand and One Nights (aka Arabian Nights)[2], translated the Kama Sutra and other works.

   [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Francis_Burton

   [2] - Burton's is by far my favorite translation of the Thousand and One Nights. You can read it for free at Project Gutenberg.[3]

   [3] - http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3435

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4. mjdAug 2026
   Since you asked, I took a survey around the office. I have the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the one edited by Wallis Budge. I have a Chinese translating dictionary, a Chinese etymological dictionary, and a Hawai'ian dictionary. I have the Yasmine Seale translation of the Thousand and One Nights. I have the Travels of Ibn Battutah. I have Mahatma Gandhi's autobiography. I have a book by Ichisada Miyazaki about the history of the infamous civil service examinations in China. There's a book of poetry by Palestinian poet Ahmad Almallah and Weinberger's little book comparing 19 translations of the same poem by Wang Wei. I have "Erotic Art of the East" by Rawson, an illustrated edition of the Rubaiyat, and a history of Iran by someone named Axworthy. I have a couple of books about pedagogy by A. Ya. Khinchin, who was Soviet Russian; I don't know whether you'd consider that "Western".

   Of those, only the Thousand and One Nights and the Book of the Dead are anything like canonical. But of the seven I talked about in the article, only the Bible and the Decameron are canonical. I wouldn't have mentioned the dictionaries, except that one of the books in the original article was a thesaurus.

   But most of the books I keep in the office are technical (lots of mathematics) or are more or less contemporary Western fiction.

   I think some people might see my reading habits as those of a dilettante with a lack of serious focus, and I don't think I would care to dispute that. As I said, my brain is full of stuff, and and what's in it doesn't always make sense or go together with the other stuff.

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5. peterfireflyAug 2024
   And Journey to the West is a fairly modern book, only a few centuries old. It is based on many older folk tales of China (including many that weren't originally Chinese) and connects them with a framing story, a bit like Decameron or One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights). Some of them had already been connected before the book was written.
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6. pbhjpbhjDec 2023
   I admit I know barely anything about the subject (but I took an interest in Burton as a younger man): is The Perfumed Garden not "dirty", ie erotic literature?

   I recall the One-Thousand-and-One Nights being quite bawdy (talking about lusting after well-endowed servants, IIRC); maybe that's not authentic Persian literature though?

   Maybe I misunderstood "nobody has ever read or heard about it"?

   Can you help me better understand your comment, thanks.

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